Crawling
by Sarah Rose Serena
Summary: AU Post Aliyah. They tried to break her spirit, steal her fire, and they failed. She didn't give up. She got out. But these things have affects. Sometimes it goes bad. Sometimes you never make it to the light. Other times...


**Crawling**

an NCIS story

_From Sarah Rose Serena_

* * *

_Blood_ ... It was all she was aware of. The stench of it. The sight of it. The feel of it. It crusted against her skin, making her itch. Her skin crawled. Never mind the intense burning, searing, pricking, lashing, stabbing pains that constantly ran through it, day and night. It was the incurable itching of that damn dried blood that was unbearable. The pain she could bite through. But the itching, the grime, all the taint ... there was nothing to be done about that.

She struggled against delirium, fighting for rationality as awareness came back to her. The reek of blood and excrement filled her nostrils. Bile rose in her throat, and she swallowed it down without sound, opening her mouth to drag in air. Every time she forgot, slipped, and inhaled through her nose, the stench of it overwhelmed her. The cement floor was riddled with cigarette butts and puddles. Blood stains pooled in various spots of the small windowless room. Chains hung from one wall, a chair sat in the corner, and then there was her. Useless, limp, and dirty, she sprawled on the gritty cement on one side of the room, opposite the steel door. The distant sounds of the living reached her ears. A hollow sound to her now. No light, no clean air. Once a day, one of the more timid of the bunch would come in and splash a bucket of dirty water on her.

Her escape attempts did not last long, not because they were rewarded with by ten lashings, but because the lashings made her too weak to withstand the interrogation sessions. She had no idea how long she'd been there. Time simply bled together after the first few days. She knew there was no hope of rescue. If she couldn't get herself out, no one else would even try.

Her father had sent her on a suicide mission, knowing full well she would not return. In fact, the longer she was here, the more time she spent with her interrogator, the more she believed that maybe her father had intended this to happen. He had sent her into a trap, making her believe she was to finish Michael's mission, when in fact she was simply being tossed into a lion's den. But she knew she had always been simply a means to an end to him. It did not surprise her all that much. Though the inadvertent hurt it caused her already fractured heart was something she would never admit to herself. Anticipation and acceptance were two very different things.

The hope of rescue had dwindled sooner than her spirit had. Much sooner. And the little fight left in her was just nature. Even hopelessness was not enough to beat the fire from her completely. She would always be Ziva David. Nothing could change that.

The part of her that she had had to kill off was the small voice in her head that had held hope for the people she had come to think of as family the past four years. The only hope she had started out with was the hope that news of her disappearance would reach NCIS, and they would come to find her. That hope had died out along with the majority of her fire. Now she was just wallowing in her resignation. She could find a way to put herself out of the misery, could provoke at least two of them to kill her, or could even find a way to do it herself. It would be the smart thing to do at this point. But she wouldn't. Didn't even consider it. Because she was Ziva David. Always would be. And Ziva David would never give up. So she continued to fight through it, continued to resist, remained silent even through her screams.

Some moments, she really could not bear it any longer. The physical pain combined with the emotional was almost too much. But those were just moments of weakness, and they always passed, like everything else. So until her last breath, she would resist, still make living hell for her captors as best she could, and still keep her eyes open for any chance at escape. She would crawl out of this encampment on her hands and knees after killing every single one of them if that was what it took. Someday.

That was the thought that kept her silent when they interrogated her. It kept her sane as they taunted her, kicked her when she was down, and spit used food at her when she was hungry. It was that thought that kept her bravery right where it was, always settled over her heart.

The door swung open, creaking on its rusty hinges as it scraped across the cement floor. Ziva opened her eyes, twitched, forcing her unwilling body to look up at the man walking in. It was Amor, the man that snuck in after the others were asleep or preoccupied with their native whores, and fed her. He risked his own life in the process for such a small task. That was what made her believe she could use him. If she was patient, if she could work him right, she just might have a chance in hell of escaping with her life. She felt his calloused hands on her, lifting her gingerly from the floor and propping her back against the cold wall. He tilted her head back, pressing a bottle of warm water to her lips. Ziva sipped slowly, forcing it down through her swollen and cracked throat.

"How is your arm?" he asked, his voice gravelly, as he kept his dark eyes downcast. Ziva watched him carefully, taking in every nuance and filing it away for later. Her right arm had been ripped from the socket earlier in the day, and had yet to be replaced. She just didn't have the strength anymore to do it herself. She was too weak without proper sustenance.

"It ..." she stopped, taking in a deep breath and hissing at the burn in her lungs. "I need you to put it back in for me," she said quietly, keeping her eyes on his face. He nodded and offered her a tight smile before gripping her arm. Ziva closed her bruised eyes and thinned her lips, gritting her teeth to avoid biting down on her tongue as he shoved it back into the precise spot it belonged in. Another wave of pain lanced through her, traveling up and down her arm again and again, like a living thing as it moved through her, like firing licking at her insides. A scuffle resounded through the small space, coming from outside. Amor looked towards the door with worry, and came to his feet.

"Goodnight, Ziva," he whispered as he hurried out, latching and bolting the door behind him. There was no way he would help her escape if she asked him now. He wasn't ready. But she was sure she did not have much time left before they gave up trying to break her and just tossed her aside. She was not willing to die in this place. There were things she had to take care, things she couldn't just let go. She had to make things right with her family, the only real family she had ever known. And to do that, she had to get out of this hellhole, and back to DC, back to Gibbs, and Tony. All of them, really. There were things she'd never said, things she needed to say, things she needed to do. Dying in this place, it just wasn't an option. Not for her ...

The next two days were the longest of her life. She was aching, bloodied, broken, and half dead. But she was alive. Nothing else really mattered at the moment. After convincing Amor to help her escape, and getting halfway home free, her captors had been alerted, and all hell had broken loose.

There was no way she was going to let them haul her back to that room when she had made it all the way to the outer gates of the compound. It took everything she had left in her to actually get free, and it wasn't without cost. There was blood, hers and theirs, and a knife in her hand and the sound of gunfire and yelling. It blurred red, and she was sure she'd go to hell now, but she was alive, and she was free. That was all that mattered.

Awareness came back slowly, and found her lying facedown on a ratty bed, in an even rattier motel room. She was still in Tel Aviv, she remembered. But there was no way she was going to go back to her father, or Mossad HQ. She couldn't. She needed a hospital, but was afraid to go outside, afraid they'd catch up to her again. She couldn't think rationally, because of the fear, of the exhaustion. But she wasn't going to make it much longer without help. She needed ... she needed ... something. But she didn't know who was left to trust.

That was what led her to the payphone across the street from her motel room, still covered in Amor's jacket, keeping her gruesome appearance mostly hidden from any passerby. There was really only one number she was willing to call. It was ridiculous and irrational, but it was the only thing she could convince herself to do. Anything else was just not an option. The adrenaline was wearing down, and she was wearing ragged, _dead woman walking_.

"Gibbs," she said, her voice sounding so much weaker out loud, more broken than she'd expected, and the sound of it shocked her. "I need help."

It was the next morning, when the door had flung open, and Gibbs and Tony rushed in, that she finally allowed herself to breath again. She had been sitting on the floor, knees drawn up to her chest, despite the bullet in her thigh. Her back had been pressed against the wall, despite the fresh lashings across it. The burning, the pain, it all had numbed hours ago. The cold press of steel clutched in her hand was the only thing keeping her lucid. And when the door burst open and she, by some miracle or force of will, managed to raise her arm high enough to aim it at the doorway, she felt everything so much more acutely all of a sudden. Her eyes wide and erratic, almost out of her mind, as she stopped herself from squeezing the trigger.

"Ziva. Ziva!" they called in unison, holding up their hands, trying to calm her. Comprehension finally reached through the fog, smacked her, and she heaved out a heavy breath, so relieved her entire being quivered. The gun slipped from her fingers and clattered noisily to the floor.

They rushed towards her, and though she heard their voices, Tony and Gibbs, heard them trying to talk to her, check her out, all she could do was lower herself to the ground, press her head in Gibbs's lap, and shut her eyes. Someone stroked her hair, which was still tangled and coated with blood and dirt and so much more, she didn't even what to know what, and felt someone else clasp her hand. She couldn't move, couldn't open her eyes, couldn't talk. All she could do was breathe and revel in the relief. Consciousness started to slip away again as she felt someone cradle her in their arms, and then a rush of wind as they left the grimy motel room behind.

Hospital, Tel Aviv, arguing outside her room, drugs kicking in, the dreams, a plane ride, and another motel room. Two weeks later, she found herself back in DC, reinstated as a liaison for NCIS. She was in intense physical therapy, undergoing pointless but required psychological care once a week by an agency provided professional, and she was searching for a new apartment.

She kept waiting for him to come to her, kept wondering if she really wanted him to or not. Gibbs had come, and though it was really a pointless effort, it mattered to her. Everyone else had come, knocking on her door and saying the appropriate and the not so appropriate things, all trying to help, all failing. He was the only one that hadn't. And she hadn't forgotten what she'd promised herself in that place. She needed to talk to him, needed to explain and forgive, and _tell_ _him_. But she was too weak-willed to go to him, too proud, too scared, too a lot of things.

So there she sat, in her empty motel room, in a dark corner, in a hard chair, staring at a phone that refused to ring. She looked up at a door that refused to be knocked on, and drank a glass of liquid fire that scorched her insides all the way down, and still couldn't burn away the memory of blood on her tongue, filling her mouth, spilling out, down her chin. The scars on her back were just thin little lines that were too pale and not smooth enough, just bitter reminders.

"Tony," she said into the phone, not wanting to wait any longer, not patient enough. "I need to see you." And that's how it started. It was simple, really. A damaged woman in a dark room, out of patience. There were things she had to say, things he needed to know, and things she needed to do. She couldn't wait anymore, couldn't delude herself, or put lies in order anymore. She couldn't find the point in it anyway. Revenge burned her skin, coursed through her blood, and if there was one thing that could get her past it, make her, not forget, but move on, it had to be this. So maybe crawling out of that dark hole had done her some good. Maybe she had a brighter future because of it.

_Finis_


End file.
